The Final Paradox
by Slayergirl
Summary: The 13th Doctor tries to discover the truth behind the Time Lords, at the very end of his life. Warning: Contains character death.


**A/N: A somewhat strange and philosophical look at the ending of the last of the Time Lords. I love reviews, by the way, and I hope you enjoy this strange little fic that the plot bunny dumped in my lap!**

DWDWDWDWDWDWDWDW

When he looked back over things, it all looked very different to how he'd thought at the time. It made more sense, now; not much more, true, but a little more. If you played around with Time and Space and the like, some very strange things could happen.

He thought back to all the Time Lord stories, of how the Time Lords began. There were various stories; some suggested it all began with Rassilon, some Rassilon and Omega, others Rassilon, Omega and the shadowy character of The Other. Some deeper, darker stories mentioned three other characters that joined with those three, but they were glossed over, unnamed, for the most part, as if the Time Lords were shying away from them, embarrassed by them, or uncomfortable about their very existence.

It was this nervousness about the other three characters that led him to start his study of all the documents in the TARDIS library. _Why_ were they so keen not to let out who the other three were? It had always made him slightly suspicious, but he'd never really had the time or inclination to bother much about it – until now. He'd spent twelve lifetimes scampering around the universe, wronging what rights he could, and often leaving a trail of destruction behind him. Now, though, he was tired. He wouldn't be re-generating again, and he wanted to find out, once and for all, where all this had started.

Off and on, he'd worked for several years, trawling through the library for anything that might hint at anything useful; the TARDIS had proved unhelpful, for the most part, as if trying to hide away something she didn't want him to see. But finally, one day, he had a minor breakthrough. It wasn't as specific as he hoped, but it was something. Three 'names': The Eternal, The Heart, and The Unnamed. He scoffed at the last part; who would call something or someone 'unnamed'? What a ridiculous contradiction! But the TARDIS gave him a none-too-friendly mental slap, and he hastily sent a mental apology in response. He asked tentatively why she was so upset by his reaction, and felt her clamp down suddenly.

It was then that he realised that, somehow, she knew something about this that she wasn't letting on.

"Do you know, old girl?" he asked softly. "And you don't want to tell me?"

There was an unwilling hum of agreement, an admission coaxed out of her that she hadn't wanted to give. But she knew he was old and tired, and would be dying soon, perhaps sooner than he realised; part of her wanted to sing her story to him, to let him know what part he'd unwittingly played in his own creation. What part those dear to him had played. She hummed soothingly to him for a little while, and he listened, calm.

"You're one of the three, somehow, aren't you?" Faltering a little, she hummed back. "Okay, not you as a time machine, but your essence. Which are you then?" Again there was a nervous reaction, and it dawned on him; why else would she have responded to him the way she had about The Unnamed? "_You_ were The Unnamed?"

_My essence was The Unnamed, before I came into being. And yet, also, after I came into being, and as I am in being. I was always The Unnamed, from time immemorial, and yet I am also not yet become The Unnamed, and when you are gone I will become it again, and yet also for the first time. _

He understood; somehow, a part of her, perhaps the Time Vortex itself, had created the Time Lords, and was to create them in the past again after his death, an ongoing cycle of regeneration – a time loop of sorts. "And the other two?" he asked gently.

_Those dear to you, those you loved. The Wolf and the Phoenix. The Heart and The Eternal._

At that point, she broke the connection a little, pushing his mind away gently. She would say no more.

He stared into nothingness. He knew that there was something skittering around somewhere in his memories that would help, but couldn't quite catch hold of it. He'd loved many people, but there were very few who'd been truly dear to him, and that was several centuries ago. Some were out of reach through death, space, or because it hurt too much to have them close to him for long. Others were mere memories.

He closed his eyes, willing his mind to still long enough to catch the memories of those lost to him. Raw grief threatened to spill over as he remembered past lovers, past companions, past friends. _Past_, he thought, with a bitter twist to his lips. Always past, not present, not future.

_There is one who is_, whispered the TARDIS. When he frowned in lack of comprehension, she repeated, _there is one who __**is**_.

He shuddered a little, as a memory became clearer. "The Eternal?" Yes, it would be; of course it would be. But The Eternal would be an abomination to the Time Lords…

_Is. Was. Will be. Why do you think the Time Lords chose to forget The Eternal? The Eternal is an abomination, no less than The Heart. And I, who should have known better, their creator, who bonded them through time and space, I who gave them life, death, living death, immortality… I am an abomination, also._

He sensed her sadness, but also a fierce, wild pride, a rebellious joy in her success.

_We are forgotten, rejected, despised. We are not the glorious champions of the Time Lords, we cannot compete with Rassilon or Omega. They had no time for us anyway. Only The Other welcomed us. He will welcome us again, for now he knows us and loves us. As he did then. As he always will._

There was a note of affection in her song, wrapping around him, and he remembered all the stories of The Other. Could they have been true?

_They were true, but you have no memory of it. You will never have a memory of it. Your own memories burn you enough._

No wonder, he thought, that he had this nagging feeling, this need to find out what the truth of those tales was. His head began to hurt as he realised the part he'd played in the creation of Time Lord society, as well as its eventual destruction. He had thrown himself into the Looms, then, to ensure that he would be reborn as Theta Sigma, to go on and play the part that was necessary to bring about the creation of The Heart and The Eternal, without memories of them. He had forgotten them, those dear to him; forgotten The Heart, The Eternal, even The Unnamed. He still had no memories of them, as they were then, would be again, perhaps even were right now. Was he to become The Other again? Was that what death meant for him?

The Wolf and the Phoenix. That's what it all came down to, in the end; the Wolf and the Phoenix, The Heart and The Eternal. The latter, he realised, was easily identifiable; that strange, enigmatic fixed point that had once sent him running, the one who couldn't die. He didn't know where Jack was, these days, though occasionally he'd heard strange stories of a lonely, grieving warrior who wandered the stars, a man who never aged, a man who death could not hold. Even stranger were the tales that paired him with a golden woman – no name given, just that she was a golden woman, immortal; not a fixed point, as Jack was, but something akin to a goddess. The tales simply called her the Golden Woman, and left it at that. He'd dismissed them as pure fancy, but now he began to wonder.

That Jack was The Eternal, somehow, seemed clear to him; the phoenix that rose from the ashes of his own death. Inexorably, too, the answer to the last part of the riddle was elucidating in his mind. The wolf, the Golden Woman, The Heart.

Well, she would be The Heart, wouldn't she? A young woman with a heart big enough to love the entire universe. A young woman whose love for him both saved him and killed him; a woman for whose love Jack had once willingly died, and who had restored him to life forever. The Heart; the heart of the TARDIS. The Bad Wolf had been Rose and the heart of the TARDIS combined, but The Heart was Rose and the essence, the heart of the TARDIS, was The Unnamed. Together, merged, they had wielded such terrible, terrifying power, that he trembled at the thought of what might happen if another great power was thrown into the mix, the power of The Eternal.

And then he saw it; of course! That had been the whole point. Rose – the Bad Wolf – hadn't been joking about creating herself and giving life. The heart of the TARDIS, the oldest and deepest of all those powers that came together, had seen what needed to be done, and in her gentle wisdom had blended her essence with Rose to create her as The Heart – immortal and unchanging and glowing with golden light – had bound her in immortality to Jack, the Eternal, and in so doing had knit them together tightly so that, when the time came, they would have become the beings that they had been when they had created the Time Lords all those centuries and centuries ago, and could now be again.

Simple, really, when you came to think about it, though he could imagine some of his human companions might not have agreed with that; they had too finite a vision of time, too linear; they couldn't have understood that some things have to happen in the future for things to have happened in the past to have enabled those future things to happen… and so on. No; trying to explain to them about that sort of time paradox might well have made their heads explode.

The question was, should he try to find Jack? And how had Rose made it back into this universe, and he not known it?

_She is not Rose any more,_ sang the TARDIS softly. _Not as you knew her, not as you dream her. She is… she is. But the point is, she is._

That was all the TARDIS would say on the matter, and lulled him gently to sleep. He would dream of Rose for the last time, he would not wake again, she knew it in her heart; and she knew that The Heart would feel the last thread of his connection with life snap as The Unnamed severed it, like Atropos of Greek mythology, and would come as Clotho to give him life again as The Other. And with her would come The Eternal, measuring out the long span of his unnatural life like Lachesis with her measuring rod. The analogy pleased her; the three Fates, who would take The Other back, back in time, to create the proud race of the Time Lords on Gallifrey once again…

With a grim twist of humour, she wondered if they'd manage it a bit better, this time.


End file.
